JLU #6 - The Infinitus Saga Part 2 of 5! Where have all the editors gone?

 

Released November 12, 2014
DC Comics, Color
25 Pages

The Infinitus Saga Part 2 of 5

Jeff Lemire - Writer
Neil Edwards -  Artist
Jay Listen - Inker
Jeremy Cox - Colorist
Travis Lanham - Letterer
Amedeo Turturro - Assistant Editor
Brian Cunningham - Group Editor

Synopsis

Beneath the surface, in the Canadian JLU bunker, the alien Ultra and Equinox sit in safety while a battle rages. They have small talk and get to know each other a little better, with Equinox telling Ultra that he's the first alien she's ever met. Ultra touches Miyaabin's hand. 

Cut to the surface, where we see the battle between the combined forces of part of the Justice League United and part of the Legion of super heroes versus some super-powered henchmen of Byth.  Whew, we have a bit roll call here:

JLU/LSH: Martian Manhunter,Green Arrow,Supergirl,Animal Man,Stargirl,Alanna Strange,Adam Strange,Equinox,Ultra the Multi-Alien,Mon-El,Brainiac 5,Saturn Girl,Phantom Girl

Villains: Shrike,Overmaster,Shatterfist,Black Mass,Nightfall

I have *no* idea what the powers of the villains are, so bear with us, but you get to see the heroes' powers pretty well on the intro splash page

Back to the story! Manhunter fights Black Mass, whose power seems to be strength plus the ability to either phase or teleport. Alanna fights Shrike in the air using her jetpack, but she suddenly vanishes and Adam Strange takes her place in midair. He falls to the ground and Shrike crashes into the snow covered trees as she misses her target.  Mon-El wonders, "Why the hell does that keep happening?" Yeah, bud. So do we all. 

We switch scenes to the moon of Ryngor around Thanagar, where Supergirl holds Byth by the neck.  He explains the new order that will be coming and not to be scared. She freaks out, saying she is not scared of anything and tosses him through some rocks. She moves in to subdue Byth, but he goes into tentacle mode and tries to subdue Supergirl. Meanwhile, Green Arrow and a Byth-controlled Hawkman fight, as do Animal Man and Stargirl against the generic thugs serving Byth. One of them zaps Stargirl from behind and knocks her out. Buddy (Animal Man) freaks out and goes all Animal Man on the thugs. Luckily Stargirl is fine, and you can see a protective bond between Buddy and Courtney forming. 

Back to the battle on Earth, where Brainy is coaching from the sidelines, Mon-El is taking out Overmaster with Saturn Girl's help, Phantom Girl is taking on Nightfall.  Somehow, when Saturn Girl connected with Overmaster, he saw that Ultra was in the bunker and orders Back Mass to two there and get him. He teleports there and Equinox tries to shoot winter powers at him, to no avail. He grabs both Ultra and Equinox, teleporting away just as Manhunter, Mon-El and Phantom Girl burst through. 

Black Mass appears on Ryngor with his prey just as Supergirl busts away from Byth. She attacks Black Mass, but he just teleports HER away back to Earth, much to Byth's chagrin. Equinox uses her winter wind power to blast back Black Mass and Byth, but Ultra is enraptured by the anomaly overhead. Byth subdues Equinox easily as he takes Ultra under his wing. Green Arrow, Animal Man and Stargirl combine up to take down Hawkman just in time to see Byth, with Ultra, summon a host of energy beings out of the anomaly to swarm the five JLU members. 

On Earth, Supergirl is teleported back into the bunker, slamming into the wall.  She tells the Earth-bound team what is going on and Manhunter asks Sardath (the Rann scientist who can use the Zeta beam for transportation. Oh and apparently Adam and Alanna switched places again, as she's now back on Earth).  Brainy says that there's already an away team on its way to Ryngor - The Legion Lost team: Wildfire, Dawnstar, Tyroc, Chameleon Girl, Tellus, Gates, and Timber Wolf!

TO BE CONTINUED!

Commentary

Some books are good one-read books so you don't have to think about the details that don't make sense that then stick out like a sore thumb when you re-read them.  Others are fun reads that make obvious mistakes about the little details that don't make sense at the time you read them.  

This issue is a good bit of both.

Before I get into that, I will say that the pencils in this book are really good.  I wasn't sure  with the first page, but by the time I got past the roll call page, I was sold on the pencils and inks. I think the colorist made a few bad calls in a couple of places, though, as on that roll call, it appears that the Nightfall character looks to be Supergirl. The design of the Infinity demons (or whatever they will be called) was interesting to me, as they reminded me of Ex Nihilo on the Marvel side.

Okay so let's get into WHY this is such a mixed bag.  Big brawl issues are fun, and this is fun because you have two fights happening on two planets several light years apart.  It was fun watching the heroes beat up on the villains, let's be honest. Mon-El in action is fun to see, as is Supergirl beating up on Byth.  Some of the character moments were nice as well - Miyaabin bonding with Ultra, Barry clearly being a protective father/uncle/older brother to Courtney.  Legion Lost appearing at the end was GREAT. All that makes the book a fun page turner to see who beats up on who.  For a 25 page book, there's a LOT going on here, and that's a good thing in a story.  No one likes a team up story where you have 20 pages of people just standing around talking, especially with the Legion. *ahem*

Now let's get to the not-so-great. Probably the biggest challenge here is that you have a super villain team here where I honestly had no idea what their powers were other than Black Mass, who obviously is a teleporter. Everyone else just seemed to be amazingly generic, with the big muscly ones obviously being bruisers, but I had no idea about the rest, and it didn't even seem to matter.  Apparently Phantom Girl was doing well in her battle with... someone... but we have no idea who that was or what happened. 

The Adam/Alanna switcheroo deal is getting old, which leads me to another criticism. If the Zeta beam is unpredictably switching out those two, why is the JLU using that as a primary teleportation source? And all the switching happens, or has happened, on panel, so seeing Alanna back on Earth at the very end was a surprise.

But let's get to the biggest problem, as a Legion reader, that I had with this story on the first read. Saturn Girl connects with Overmaster's mind to give Mon-El an advantage. Imra is the strongest telepath there is.  Some 20th century meathead is able to see into HER mind as part of this connection?  This is clearly a beat just to move the plot forward, and it is an extremely weak one from a Legion perspective.  Someone new to the Legion would probably be able to shrug this off, but long term Legion readers would have massive problems with this moment, and to me it kind of tarnishes the rest of this issue. I mean, why have a full knockdown drag out moment with all these characters if we never understand what they do?  The fight could have been just three baddies and the fight could have been over in a much shorter amount of time. We shall see about the rest of the arc.

Lastly, if Brainy was able to take his away team back in time and he's able to communicate with the Legion Lost team, why was there no effort to try and get them back when he knew they were in this same time period?

At the end of the day, the main problems that are illustrated above, both art and writing come down to editing. It's a discipline that requires consistent attention to detail for a quality finished product.  It's difficult and something that I don't think I can do.  However, it is very glaring when it is not done well.  And this issue is a good example of that.  This book was released in 2014-2015, and it seems like DC has not invested much in this skill since then.

Grade: C+.  Details matter.